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64th Congress 1 
1st Session J 



SENATE 



Document 
No. 443 



PREPAREDNESS AND DEMOCRATIC 
DISCIPLINE 



By 



GEORGE W. ALGER 



FROM 



THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 



APRIL, 1916 




PRESENTED BY MR. KERN 
May 16 (Calendar day, May 17), 1916. — Ordered to be printed 



WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

1916 



^^ 






3. of D. 
MAY 27 1916 






-X 



PREPAREDNESS AND DEMOCRATIC DISCIPLINE. 



By George W. AlcxEr. 



I. 

" The great word of the present day," said Emerson in 1838, " is 
culture." It was the same word with a different meaning with which 
the war began. Some of the defenses of Germany by which her 
statesmen and professors sought then to justify her in the eyes of 
the world raised not merely issues of right and wrong as to the war 
itself, but issues as to fundamentals in ciA^lization. 

The Germans asserted a high claim for Avorld power for the 
Teutonic race, based upon a superior Kultur, a civilization which 
Germany has evolved and which they declared demands through its 
success, through its practical results, a far wider sphere of power and 
influence in world civilization than it has yet received. 

Some of these claims of Kultur we have forgotten, as they were 
not often repeated after the first few months of the war. 

The Germans said, in effect: We alone of the great nations of 
modern times have succeeded in evolving a great organization of 
government, a perfection of administration, unequaled in the whole 
history of the world. We have done it against tremendous odds and 
in an incredibly short time. France is a decadent and corrupt bu- 
reaucracy, masquerading as a democracy. England is a patchwork 
of disorganized law, feudal survivals, and precedents patched with 
clumsy adaptations of transplanted modern German ideas — a civili- 
zation gone to seed. What right does her civilization give her to 
the choice place in the sun? AVhat is there about the organization 
of English government which justifies its continuance except on the 
basis of sea power and force? Rome lived and spread her eagles 
through the ancient world by the superior genius of Roman law, by 
the civilizing power of that law which lived even after the barbarian 
laid his hands upon the city of the Caesars. The Teutons, declared 
the German professors, are the successors of the Ca'sars. The right 
to world dominion belongs and rightly belongs to this race, the race 
alone capable of CA^olving a superior world civilization. 

So we in America were compelled to think hurriedh% and for too 
short a period, of world civilization. The train of our reflection — if 
we reflected — was not entirely pleasant. We remembered that ours is 
not the youngest but the oldest of modern democracies. We remem- 
bered that many, if not most, of the general principles of democracy 

3 



4 PEEPAREDNESS AND DEMOCEATIC DISCIPLINE, 

were born, or first practiced, on our soil; that tliese ideas were, a 
hundred years and less ago, the great contribution of America to the 
transformation of Europe. The revolutionary principles which Met- 
ternich and the concert of Europe a hundred years ago strove to 
stamp out had thriven on the new and favored soil. We had no 
feudalism to overcome. Our press was not fettered ; our religion was 
free. No bonds of caste and heredity gripped us to the past. We had 
no white peasants attached to the soil. We had a new rich continent 
of unlimited wealth. We preached to the world the promise of 
democracJ^ All the handicaps from which we were free bound 
Germany, and many more besides. Yet, at the beginning of this great 
w^ar, she was claiming in sincerity and good faith the right to a 
world domain as justified by the results of a superior world civiliza- 
tion. 

This is no place to consider the accuracy of the Teuton's prefatory 
estimate of his civilization. No other country has made a similar 
contention. No other nation has sufficient confidence and pride in its 
accomplishments in the organization of national life to make such a 
boast, even if, indeed, it would be willing to concede that such a 
standard alone is a sufficient test for civilization. Last of all would 
democratic America make such a claim. 

Yet the issue is one at Avhich we can not blink and which has not 
changed simply because we have ceased to think about it. The funda- 
mental postulate of this w^ar is the failure of democracy as a system 
of human government; that we need in place of it, in place of its 
wastefrd, shiftless, haphazard character, and methods, a civilization 
of intense and practical efficiency based upon autocracy and to the 
existence of which autocratic discipline is essential. This issue 
should make us, even in the midst of the smoke and thunder of war, 
self-critical. On the accuracy of this fundamental postulate the 
future history of democracy will largely be determined — our own as 
well as the democratic spirit in other lands. 

When we marvel at Germany in this war, at her wonderful capa- 
city for carnage, at the terrible efficiency and completeness of her 
mechanism for destruction; when we see the disorganization of Eng- 
land, the long wait for the development of sufficient ammunition, the 
attitude of the trade-unions, the strikes of the workers, the fumbling 
with the drink problem in a national crisis, the lack of adequate en- 
listments — the claims of the German professors come back to us; for 
in the final analj'sis this war is between the soulless Great State and 
democracy. Those who believe in democracy in our own land should 
not be blind to this issue. Drifting along as we are in America 
to-day, without moral leadership, with public opinion a perpetual 
pendulum between sentimentalism and materialism, with one class 
so filled with the horror of bloodshed as to want peace at any price 
and another counting its riches in war stocks and war orders and 
reaching out for South American trade, we need to be made to see 
the issue as it affects ourselves — not in our pockets but in our prin- 
ciples of government — to see that the war, whntever its outcome, is 
bound to influence profoundly, for good or for ill, our national life. 

We can not keep out of this w\ar. We may avoid the conflict in 
arms, but the question whether the democratic principle deserves to 
live remains ours, at least. Whether it can live is the problem of 
England and France. 



PREPAREDNESS AND DEMOCRATIC DISCIPLINE. 5 

Unless we can do one of two things, this war mnst mean moral 
loss to America — unless we can enter it as a participant for something- 
more than a trade reason; or unless, while keeping out of it, we can 
prevent the soil of America from becoming engulfed in a morass of 
materialism, by finding an issue upon which the moral forces of this 
country can unite. 

It is to make clear that issue, that fundamental issue of the 
permanence of democracy, that America to-day needs leadership. 

II. 

We need to be made to see our own stake in this war. In 1815 the 
concert of the powers expressed by their joint action a final de- 
termination as to what the crushing of France should mean to the 
intellectual and spiritual life of Europe. It Avas that the last ember 
of the P'rench Revolution should be relentlessly extinguished. It 
meant for forty or more years the triumph of reaction, the steriliza- 
tion of life, the suppression of freedom of thought, of action, of 
ever\i;hing remotely resembling the democratic impulse in every 
countr}' in Europe. In no countrj^ was the power of that reaction 
stronger than in Germany and in Austria under Metternich. Upon 
it Bismarck built the modern Germany. The conception of the Great 
State — the State as power; the subordination of the individual 
wholly to the State, his rights considered as derivative and not in- 
nate ; the State as the autocrat, the individual as vassal ; the new 
feudalism headed by a divine-right monarch whose conception of 
power was such as died in England nearly three centuries ago 
with the ax which beheaded Charles I — this became Germany's 
new principle of civilization. On it she has built a powerful, a 
highly organized, an immensely efficient government. The German 
militaristic government has made modern bureaucratic Germany 
what she is to-day — a menace to the spiritual future of the Avorld. 
It was the remorseless logic of the new Jesuitism, the concejition of 
the State as power, superior and unconstrained by law, by duty, or 
plighted word, which marched through devastated Belgium and 
closed the sea over the drowning women and children of the 
Lusitania. 

What is to be the final effect of Germany successful or Germany 
defeated upon American opinion and upon American life? For 40 
yeai's liistorv traces upon Europe the reaction of European thinking 
on the French Revolution. It was for the most part a reaction 
against democracy, against the bloody shibboleth of " Freedom, 
equality, fraternity.'" What will the present war do to American 
opinion ? The character and the future of democratic government 
will depend for many years upon the lines of thinking set in motion 
among our people by this war. What will they be? Will they be 
such as to send us foward as a nation, or set us back? 

It is a time in which Americans should consider anxiously their 
own country. Peace has its dangers no less menacing than war. 
Even in the midst of war we can but see certain spiritual gains in 
the countries which are pouring out their blood and treasure. The 
development of national consciousness, the establishment in tears 
and sorrow of the spiritual unity of a great people, is the thing 
which comes to us from France, reborn in her resolve to make the 



6 PREPAREDNESS AND DEMOCRATIC DISCIPLINE. 

France of her children free from the menace of militarism. Enghmd, 
with her prosperous and self-satisfied bourgeoisie, her sporting- squire 
government, her terrible and inexcusable poverty unrelieved except 
b}^ the silly shifts of Lady Bountifuls and poor rates, her discon- 
tented and jealous working classes; England, stale with an unequal 
and unjust prosperity, is breaking up a caste system and reorganiz- 
ing and revitalizing a national life. Belgium, devastated and ex- 
ploited by barbarous invasion, wdll send down to generations yet un- 
born the thrill of her King's rejoinder to menacing Germany, that 
" Belgium is a country and not a road.*" The national consciousness 
born of w^ar, the precious by-products of sacrifice, of tears, of common 
and united effort for ^•ictory in arms, is not to be denied even to 
Russia. The dreaming Slav sees the beginnings of a new era in holy 
Russia. Germany, holding a world at bay and waging war with a 
relentless and deadly efficiency such as the Avorld never saw, girding 
her loins for fresh aggressicm, at once the menace and the marvel 
of our time, shouts her " Deutschland fiber Alles," the hymn of a 
nationalism which threatens civilization itself. The Avar means not 
the destruction of national spirit but the creation of newei- and per- 
haps finer diversities, the finding of the common soul of varied peo- 
ples, the finding in common sacrifice and effort of the spiritual basis 
for national life. 

I am not glorifying war; but hate war as we may, it does these 
things. The Nelson monument set among the lions at Trafalgar 
Square, the tattered battle flags in the Church of St. Louis almost 
touching the tomb of Napoleon, the trophies of war treasured in 
public galleries in all great nations of the world, are not symbols 
of victories, or of heroes and conquerors, but expressions of that 
unitv of spirit which makes the soul of a nation. There is no true 
patriotism, no true love of country, without this unity of spirit. No 
true nation exists or can exist without it. It is a thing which money 
can not buy or mere natural wealth create. 

This is something which we Americans should remember. We hope 
for the day when there shall be what William James calls a moral 
substitute for war; that is, the attsiinment of true unity of national 
spirit, without blood, without the tears of widows and the fatherless. 
What will this Avorld war do to the largest country except China 
now enjoying peace? Can we endure the hardships of a mean pros- 
perity and kee]D our soul? Can we evolve from and by peace this 
moral substitute for war ? Can we so revitalize democracy that when 
the war is over America will mean to Europe something else than 
the land which fattened on war orders and the trade salvage of 
distress ? 

Siq^pose we stop for a moment our everlasting talk about the pros- 
pect of being the money market of the world, of being a creditor 
nation, about opportunities for South American trade and the per- 
petual ticker talk and the new nabobism of the war stocks. Suj^pose 
we consider the demands which this war makes upon American patri- 
otism. It is only a larger and finer democracy which can produce a 
moral substitute for w^ar. 

The President's addresses in his recent speaking tour have been 
admirable in tone and have lifted the purely military aspects of pre- 
paredness to a high ethical plane, where they belong. But what we 
have to deal with is not mere military and naval preparation in 



PREPAREDNESS AND DEMOCRATIC DISCIPLINE. 7 

this narrow sense. The main problem with which we have to con- 
tend, and for which we must find a solution if we are to be anything 
better than a South African miUionaire among the nations, is the 
problem of demccratic discipline. The wise editor of Life has put 
it so well that I can do no better than quote him : 

It is Prussian discipline that is crowding tlie world so hard, and the question 
is whether democracy can produce u discipline to match and overcome it. If 
it can not, Prussian discipline based on autocracy seems likely to possess the 
earth. So the wnv seems still to he a contest between absolutism and democracy, 
its main errantl being to compel democracies to develoj) and maintain an effec- 
tive discipline. Collectivism may be the result from the war, l>ut it will be a 
by-product. The main asset will be democratic discipline. 

Where? Where else than on our own soil? Are we producing it? 
Are we thinking about it at all ? Is this new militarism, this clamor 
for armaments, for a bigger Navy, for a larger Army, this jockeying 
for position among the politicians in the name of preparedness the 
best we can do? A mean pacificism feebly denounces the principle of 
preparedness. A stupid and blustering militarism talks aliout pre- 
paredness with a tone of finality, as though a bigger Navy and Army 
for America were all that was needed for the apotheosis of a shift- 
less, undisciplined democracy for its transformation into something 
which will fill the eye and sicken the soul. 

III. 

We are in a perilous period of American democracy ; we are threat- 
ened with what bankers and fools call prosperity; we are threatened 
with wealth which we have not earned and do not deserve. What will 
it do to us? Can we evolve the higher democracy? No boy is proud 
of his father simply because he is rich; no man is proud of his 
country simply because it is prosperous. This war is creating in 
every European country a flood of new and finer loyalties, patriotic 
affections born of sacrifice and tears. Will the sea which separates 
us from the war separate us from these finer things also? Can we 
attain the high patriotism without war ? 

A former hifalutin period in our country was vocal with manifest 
destiny. The slogan has not been heard among thoughtful Ameri- 
cans for a generation. It was based upon our natural resources, 
boundless opportunities, the contributions not of man but of nature. 
In the wasteful and orderless exploitation of these natural resources 
a lawless, undisciplined, and formless type of government followed. 
At a moment when the necessity foi a democratic discipliue comes 
home to us we are forced to realize some of the ugly things which 
come in our own country from the absence of that discipline. Take, 
first, the "hyphen." 

What is there about the much-berated hyphenated American which 
irritates us? Is it not first and foremost a feeling of failure at a 
point Avhere we had always blissfully assumed success? We had as- 
sumed that, having carefully inspected the innnigrant for contagious 
diseases and a few other matters before letting him loose upon our soil 
to be exploited and to struggle with that new and pervasive lawless- 
ness which we called American opportunity, he would straightway, 
certainly after a few years, become an American. 



8 PEEPAEEDNESS AND DEMOCEATIC DISCIPLINE. 

The menace of nonassimilated masses in our undisciplined democ- 
racy has taken a new meaning in the presence of the possibility of 
our own participation in the Avar. The disturbances in Lawrence, 
Paterson, Colorado were mere labor troubles a few years ago. We 
are uneasily conscious now of a new element of danger. We reflect 
upon it from a new angle of vision to-day. Un- Americanized America 
is a new aspect of the discontent which we had repressed with martial 
law and which flamed forth in the I. W. W., the Socialists, the Syn- 
dicalists, and the dynamiters. What could we expect for the defense 
of our institutions from those who are taught by Socialism to-day 
that our Constitutioji was formulated by grafters to make money out 
of the depreciated paper currency which they had brought up in 
anticipation of a rise after a more stable government had been 
adopted? What could we expect from those who are taught by the 
same teachers that patriotism is folly and that government is the 
mere expression of conscious and purposeful class selfishness in its 
effort to exploit the worker — the worker, moreover, who, in turn, is 
urged to grasp for government; to rule, in turn, by making laws not 
for the general good but for his own immediate and selfish interest? 

What will democratic discipline do with the American immigrant 
after the war? Will it continue, as before, to consider him merely 
as a human mechanism, an asset for industrial exploitation, or as a 
man, a potential unhyphenated American? Shall we wait until 
after the war to begin to formulate a program, wait until the flood- 
gates are open and the inundation begins? Shall we content our- 
selves with abusing our foreign born as though the love of the old 
country were not a virtue, a potential benefit to the new? There 
are no hyphenated gypsies. Do we want more of them? 

Shall we organize our Army under the stimulus of the clamor for 
preparedness on a basis hostile to or auxiliary to democracy? An 
army may be a menace to democracy. Many European armies are 
of this character. An army may also be a training school for demo- 
cratic discipline, a means for the union of all classes and conditions 
of men for service on the basis of a common duty to the state in such 
fashion as to create new and desirable conceptions of national unity ; 
a means, moreover, of creating a closer association of men from dif- 
ferent walks of life, as good for democratic government as plowing 
is for the soil. Shall the army for preparedness be made an instru- 
ment of democracy or a menace to it, a sheer adventure in militarism 
foreign to our traditions and repugnant to our ideals? 

The " hyphen," the immigrant, and the Army are in the fore- 
ground. I3ut the great America, the America large enough to meet 
the obligations of a new world, must respond to new reactions, which 
will result either in a larger and finer conception of democratic dis- 
cipline or a humiliating failure to attain a triumph for democratic 
ideals which will means loss not merely to us but to the whole world. 

One of the first problems which will come to us will be a result of 
certain new reactions due to a confusion of militaristic Germany with 
German social and industrial organization. A considerable part of 
the industrial legislation which Germany had adopted for the physi- 
cal well-being of her people is associated now in our country with a 
conception of the state which is distasteful to us and wholly foreign 
to our own ideas — a conception of the state in which the worker is a 



PREPAEEDNESS AND DEMOCRATIC DISCIPLINE. 



9 



feudal dependent upon an autocratic, militant, but otherwij^e benevo- 
lent, overlord, and under which, as we are now told, his individual 
initiative and personal freedom have been so fully suppressed that 
the average workman is unconscious of their absence. Industrial 
Germany conserves her human resources; militant Germany to-day 
uses those resources. This principle of con.servation is new with us, 
is practically untried, and much needed. Individual initiative and 
personal freedom as political rights are our oldest and most cherished 
doctrines. The wreckage occasioned by our failure to work out effect- 
ive modifications of our individualism to meet a new industrialism 
had in recent years inclined many of us to experiments with German 
industrial legislation for the conservation of human resources to meet 
our own economic conditions. The workmen's compensation laws of 
recent years are of German origin. They have taken firm root and 
are not likely to be dislodged in the near future by any reaction 
against what is now called the German conception of the servile State. 
But the compulsory pensions, the occupational-disease, old-age, and 
sickness insurance plans, the State-controlled housing systems, all of 
which are parts of German social legislation and which honest and 
efficient management have there brought to a high degree of perfec- 
tion, are already being considered with critical eyes and their avail- 
ability in a democracy is being questioned. The logic involved seems 
to be this : German social legislation has produced a vast number of 
physically fit soldiers for the German armies. Therefore, the system 
which makes them fit as soldiers is evil and should be avoided in a 
democracy. The startling figures on the unfitness of the English as 
soldiers, shown by the percentages of rejections for physical reasons, 
which Price Collier^ gave us a few years ago, do not disturb us. We 
dislike to think of our own workers as possible .soldier.s. 

We prefer to ignore the great fact of modern warfare, that war 
to-day is no longer the mere putting into battle array of a small 
percentage of the population, leaving the great majority of citizens 
to their ordinary employment. The war which is going on in 
Europe is a war not merely of soldiers but of nations. Every par- 
ticle of economic power is being invoked to make military success. It 
will not be soldiers, but the discipline of nationality expressed in 
countless ways which will triumph. In such a warfare how would 
the discipline of American life, of American Government, of Amer- 
ican industrial and social organization stand the test which would 
be placed upon them? 

' Price Collier says, in his England and the English: 

"The followins table, covering a twelvemonth ended September 30, 1907, gives a commentary upon 
the physical condition of the men offering themselves as recruits for the regular army! 





Offered for 
enlistment. 


Rejected 

for 
physical 
reasons. 




Offered for 
enlistment. 


Rejected 

for 
physical 

reason-s . 




20,975 

1,8.58 

2,523 

1,031 

791 


8,807 

1,084 

1,821 

363 

452 


Newcastle 


1,493 
■ 776 
2,905 
956 
1,500 


1,046 


Birmingham 


Sunderland 


282 




Glasgow 


1,135 


ShetTield 


Dundee 


680 


Leeds ... 


Edinburgh 


628 







^ " These men were yoimg men and men wiih a taste for outdoor life. Nor is the standard itself very 
high which they arecalled upon to pass." 



10 I'ltKI'AIIKIiN'KSS AND DKM (XUtATlC DISCIIT.I N K. 

In tlie r('|»«)il ot the Sec'i'ctary oi" tlic Iiitcrioi' for 1'.>1.'> occur some 
wise words oil (his subject which will heai- repetition. 

SoiiH' iiKtiilhs mIikv I koukIiI I" Iciini wlml I coiihl oi' llic nsscis id' llii>. i'i»uiitry 
as llu-y ml!,'lit 1»<' rcncMilctl l».v lliis (It'iinrduciil, wlicic \v«' were in point of dovel- 
opnionl, niid wliiil we liiul witli wlilcii lo mcci tlic world widcli was U^aching 
us Hint war was im lonj^cr a set conlcsl Ix'lwccii nior<> or loss nioMlo arnuxi 
forces, hid an oiidurin;; contest hctwccn all tlio life forces of the coiileslinfj; 
|)arli«'s lh(>ir linancial slren;;lli, tluMr industrial organization and adaptalnlity, 
their crop yields and their mineral resources; and that it iiltiiiiately counts to a 
lest of tlu> very ;,'eniiis of the peoples involved. l''or to niohilize an army, even 
a jxreat army, is now no more than an idle evidence of a siniile foi-in of striMi'jt!i, 
If hehlnd this army the nation Is not or;,'anized. 

Onr croj) ^nehls, our miiieral and liiiaiiciid resources ai'e doubtless 
exc(dhMd and sutisfvini^. I liaxc oiscn in ^ footnote .some statistics 
on (he iiiilitness of the Kn«;lish worker for service in (he Army. 
^\\\ni are the American statistics on (he same subjects I have be- 
fore me as I wri(e (hi- s(atistics cu)m])ikHl by the Tnited States 
MaiiiK- Corps for the year 15)15. showipo- the luimber of applicants 
exitmiiii'd. (hose accepted for iMdislmciit, and (he j)ercenta<;e ae- 
cepd'd. For (he whole Dnited States, the appliciints were 41,168 in 
number. Of tiiese. ii,S;5.'i, or 1).81 \)vv cent, were found physically fit 
for the service; in other woi-ds, 1 mnii out of every 11 examined, 
Eleven thousand and twche men applied in New York City, and 
of (lu>sc. ;)1('» were* found lit for service, or •2.^i(){) i)er cent. Those who 
lind (hcmscht's now siiddcidy in(erested in physiciil fitness as a great 
elenu'iU. in military preparedness may profitably consider these 
s(a(is(ics. lndus(rial anarchy in peace does not make for physical 
pre})aredness in war. 

IV. 

It is because (he oroaui/a(ioii of national life is so eminently im- 
j)ortan(, because its absence is t)ne <d' the uuiin sources of our peril, 
thid we should be interested priuuirily in the developuient. of a national 
consciousness and a discipline, which are good for petice, and which 
can be forwarded now by the peril of war if statesmen of vision 
can be found to give the movement leadershi]). Any reaction of 
opinion which tends to retard or fru-strate that devel()|)ment is a 
national peril. The lack of just that kind of leadershi]) to-day is 
conspicuous. The time is ripe for the develojnnent of a discipline 
adapted to and expressive of the ])hiloso|)hy of democracy for a 
definite antl concrete program. Instead of such statesmanship, we 
have nothing as yet which is constructive, unless a i)ropaganda for 
large exjienditures on purely military and naval matters deserves 
the name. 

There is with us. mt)reo\er. now as always, a ty[)e of mind which 
is not entitled to leadership, which often successfully claims it, 
which learns nothing and forgets nothing, which for the needs of 
a far-reaching future has nothing but a morass of learning and a 
perpetual ajipeal to the traditions of the past, which clamors for 
the revival of the eighteenth-century philoso[)hy of an agricultural 
democracy, for "' a return to those ])rinciples of individual liberty 
on which our country was founded" — principles truly American, 
but which need now as never before expansion and adaptability to 
new and changed snrroundings. These men ai'e proclaiming to 



PREPAIIEDNESK AND I)KM(K;KATHJ rJlHCtI»r.lNK. H 

sli^4)tly hon!(] list(!iicr.s, at oouiitloss piiMic (Jinnors, tlic. dcisirsihility 
of tciicliin^ the l'oi'(;i^ri(!r oomin^ to our .sfiorcjH ('.]}r\\irvt\l\\-<-v.t\Uu'y 
individiiJilisiri as an esscuitial arnJ prccioiiH Arncrir-an (Joftriric, jm- 
cnliaily dcsirahlo for the iiri(J(',rf(;(l and tlic overworked. 'I'hi.s lyfje. 
of |)r(;acliin^. to^'ctlier with tfie n!f>r^'ani/,ation oi' our viowH on tlie, 
adaptability to our soil of (jreruian (;onf;e.ptions of Hooial le^rishdion, 
has hrou^dit industi'ial legislation nearly to a starirj.sl ill. 

A reaetion a«rainst all social le^rislation has Ix-^nin. The manu- 
facturers' or^'anizations are already solif;itin^ funds frotn ouc an^ 
other to wipe out .social legislation; to prevent the continuance or 
extension or the new type of law for tlur irnprovetrK-nt <)\' the coruJi- 
tion of the worker. A n(;w ally lias jf<ined Ihetn. 'I'lu; selfish desire 
artificially to stimulate the /:(ro\vth of lahor unions \>y taking' away 
from all workiti^ p(;r;ple evej-y oth<!r form oi' pi-r^tectirm fi-om ex- 
ploitation has inrliu-ejj Mj-. f/omfjers to announce recently a f;ani- 
pai^n by t\\(t Am(!rif;an I'"e(Jeral.if>n <>\' I>;ibor against Hur;h le^'isla- 
tiori thiou^diout the country. He is aj^ainst industrial boards and 
commissions e\'(!n more tJjan tfie manufacturers' or^'ani/.atir^ns. " Re- 
peatedly," he declares, "the warning has been ^'iven that ilu-Hn 
numerous attempts to rej^ulate industrial conditions and evils by 
law are insidious dan^'ers to the hest int^jrests and welfare of the 
wage earners." 

'J his reaction is not confinerj (/^ the field of hit*or lefrishifiof). 'I lie 
existence of war affords an opportunty i'ov Toryisru. fialf stupifj and 
half cunning, to clamor against, "regulation," against /neddlesome 
Goveinrnent chjgging tfie wfieels of industry, tiirottling indu-try, 
and so forth, 'i'here is a vary considerable cla.ss in America of thofWJ 
who are against demfx;ratic discipline, becauw; they 'nu make money 
or attain power by its absence. Infiustrial feudalism, well cntab- 
lished, drj<?s not wish to be disturbf;d by the law. If the 'I'ory reac- 
tion against German industrial legislation can be extenrjed to cover 
the whole field of social and economic legislation, the future of 
American dem'^K-racy will be .seriously and injuriously affecteri. 

Will it succeed ? It is perhaps too early to say. Jiecent years have 
made rereiations wliich are too fresh to f^e forgotten and wfiich ought 
to make the reaction less extreme. Tt was only a few years ago, for 
example, that the principle of Government regulation of railway 
securities was declared an outrageous int<^;rference with individual 
and corporate rights. Kecent railroad history has tFirown a flood 
of light upon the tr\i(t motives of thos^- who led the clamor against 
this kind of legislation. Tt is not likely that the exposures of Kock 
Island. Frisco. \ew Ifaven. and half a dozen similar but smaller 
.scandals, will be readily forgotten. Tlut Toryi.srn which is a^n'im^ 
interference and regiilation is largely slupid. hut it also is largely 
eelfi.sh and di.shonest. Will the anti.s*;rvile State propaganda be 
effective to thwart or delav genuine and needed refoiTn tm lines con- 
fcistent with American principles? 

German ideals are largely expres.«*d in making the b<fttom of the 
social seale comfortable and. -till wors*;. contented: ours, until rjuit^ 
recently, in more or less inefferrtive att^-rnpt- at m^kir;g the ton of 
the s'^K-ial scale uncomfortable, le, tri all 

the justified discontent which ir , - in a 

politically demrxj;ratic state, linn farrt that our antitnjst acts, like 
the English penal laws of a century ago. have been both dra.stic and 



12 PBEPAEEDNESS AND DEMOCEATIC DISCIPLINE. 

ineffective, is beside the mark. The point is that, however stupid the 
effort may have been, American democracy aimed to limit the undue 
"Wealth of the powerful rather than the undeserved poverty of the 
poor. 

Social legislation in America is likely to receive a new turn as a 
by-product of the war. It may for a time cease altogether. The 
cost of government has increased enormously in recent decades. 
The clamor for efficiency in the past few years has been largely a 
demand for the elimination of " regulatory " legislation of all kinds. 
This clamor will increase. The thinking behind it, real or alleged, 
is for the most part a composite of the views of those who believe 
in the economic gospel of Herbert Spencer and of those whose con- 
servatism is social blindness carried to the point of stupidity. It 
is this combination, which is far more dangerous to the future of 
America than the Socialists, who are teaching the immigrant that 
ours is and from the beginning was a purel}^ capitalistic Govern- 
ment, cunningly devised for the purpose of sucking his blood. 

The conflict in America will be intensified in the next few years 
between those who believe in the evolution of American law ade- 
quate to meet not merely political but economic and social de- 
mands, to which it must respond or fail, and those who believe 
in Mr. Carnegie's gospel of wealth — anarchistic individualism tem- 
pered by ostentatious philanthrophy ; the philosophy whose fullest 
practical expression is recorded in the Pittsburgh Survey — a hid- 
eous cartoon on Democracy. 

The next few years will require from most of us a deal of think- 
ing to knoAv in which camp we belong. Great changes of one 
sort or another are coming. The anti-German sentiment is be- 
ing utilized by those who hope to develop not only a hatred of 
Prussian autocracy and despotism — against which the German peo- 
ple themselves were struggling before the war and which they must 
meet after it is over — but an equal prejudice against the wonder- 
ful system of government by which in spite of militarism Ger- 
many has evolved in less than 45 years an intelligent, coordinated, 
intensive, highly educated, and e"fficient nationalism such as the 
world never knew before. 

Those who just now are talking almost hysterically about a policy 
of preparedness are making certain false assumptions. They are 
advocating a national policy which, if adopted in the one-sided 
and incomplete way in which it is at present being presented, will 
set us back 50 years in possibility of true progress. The notion 
that preparedness is a mere military thing, to be had by superim- 
posing upon the most wasteful, extravagant, and inefficient army 
and navy establishment in the world a new mass of similar ex- 
penditures, is a delusion. If we are so insistent upon preparation 
for war, and if we are, as we say, still unprepared after spending 
on such preparations over three billion dollars in the last 20 years, 
exclusive of pensions, let us at least in our preparation recognize 
an essential part of its true basis. The power behind military 
Germany is industrial Germany. The organization of German life 
is doubtless extreme, but the current preparedness doctrines, how- 
ever much they may differ on military or naval estimates, agree 
at least in this: they ignore absolutely "every necessity for improv- 
ine; the industrial organization, the economic basis for national 



PREPAREDNESS AND DEMOCRATIC DISCIPLINE. 13 

unit3^ Sweatshops, child hibor, industrial anarchy held in check 
by martial law, the exploitation of the worker, lack of an intel- 
ligent policy in handling the immigrant, industrial accidents crip- 
pling and burdening the worker, industrial diseases unregulated 
and unprevented, the almost total absence of effective labor legis- 
lation on the side of inspection and regulation, the exploited ten- 
ant farmer, the stupid chaos of liquor legislation, the whole mass 
of haphazard, slipshod laws which seem to def}^ all attempts at 
coordination and economy of administration — all these and a hun- 
dred others are true problems of preparedness which are to-day 
ignored. 

It is a disciplined democracy which America needs, a democracy 
disciplined to a capacity for true leadership such as will effectuate 
a Pan American federation, as a new world contribution of democ- 
racy toward the foundations of peace. The strident patriots who are 
expounding crude preparedness propagandas, in principles and pur- 
poses identical with all the armed peace propagandas which have 
proved wrong in a hundred j^ears, ignore all such considerations. 
If they have their wa,y, there ma}^ be an additional reason for ignor- 
ing the economic basis of national unity, the plea of poverty — that 
we can't afford it. The propagandists of preparation seem ready 
to do an3'thing but improve the quality and character of our democ- 
racy. To them it is all a matter of guns, soldiers, submarines, and 
huzzas for the flag; not the establishment of a democracy supremely 
worth fighting for. 

True preparedness calls not merely for an external but for an 
internal and industrial program. The national-defense orators who 
to-day fill the papers with their speeches seem to have in mind 
only enormous naval and military expenses — a program which leaves 
pressing industrial problems as usual to private initiative and to 
philanthropy. Already, for example, one organization of public- 
spirited citizens is planning a program for the alien which ought 
in its essential features to have been a governmental policy ex- 
pressed in effective law at least 25 years ago. 

E^ery destructive and disintegrating force in America is logically 
and by instinct on the side of the militant, for the militant program 
retards the normal development of a sane industrial program, an 
effective government, an organized democracy. Most of us, except 
the extrme pacifists, are entirely willing to haae our Government 
expend all the money which may be reasonably necessary for na- 
tional defenses and the protection of our national honor. We are 
also willing and quite anxious to have the funds provided, in part 
at least, by cutting millions out of the fraudulent pension rolls, 
out of the impossible naval stations and absurd Army posts, out 
(.f the countless lootings of the pork barrel of Congress for ex- 
travagant and unnecessary public buildings, and the endless appro- 
priations for river and harbor improvements, which improve noth- 
ing but the political fences of statesmen. No country in the world 
has so little to show for her enormous expenditures on military 
and naval establishments as our own. A timely and patriotic pro- 
gram of preparedness might well begin with a policy of retrench- 
ment against waste and extravagance, an expression of self-denial 
akin to self-discipline. Nothing so revolutionary and so desirable 
lias as yet been more than suggested. There are pending as I write, 



14 PREPAREDNESS AND DEMOCRATIC DISCIPLINE. 

thus early in the session of Congress, bills involving the expenditure 
of $300,000,000 for munition factories where they will do local po- 
litical interests the most good. 

How can a sane program for the perfection of a democracy of 
peace be even thought of in the midst of such a clamor for military 
preparedness — and appropriations? Yet that program must be con- 
sidered. The danger to America to-day is the ascendency at this 
time of shortsighted men, unduly excited over preparation for war, 
who can not visualize the America whose great need is prepara- 
tion for peace, for the evolution by patient labor and infinite pains, 
by the love and loyalty and wisdom of her freemen, of that difficult 
and ideal democracy, which harmonizes and blends political and 
industrial freedom — the only liberty which can enlighten the world. 



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